The Research4Life User Forum is meant to provide a collective voice in the on-going and future developments of the HINARI, AGORA and OARE Programmes, with also a focus on TEEAL and PROTA programmes. The forum is open for discussions on various topics related to agriculture, health and environmental sciences. Announcements, vacancy posts, events are also shared on the forum. There is a library section were members can post material, or get material shared by the coordinators. Members can participate in the forum using their emails or by logging in to the forum. This is a platform, for all members to share openly as well as connect with each other. Membership is free and all those who are interested can become members.
HINARI, AGORA and OARE programmes (HINAGOA) were developed to answer the need to improve access to up-to-date scientific scholarly literature in biomedical, health sciences, agriculture, environmental sciences and related fields for scientists, researchers and information managers in low income countries.
The launch of HINARI led by WHO in collaboration with the publishers and Yale University, in January 2002 was prompted by the research and teaching needs of the user community in the developing countries particularly in South Asia, Latin America and Sub-Sahara Africa, many who had not had access to journals for many years and worked with outdated technologies due to lack of access to recent scholarly journals.
AGORA and OARE programmes launched in 2003 and 2006 respectively have been developed along the lines and address similar needs with focus in agriculture and the environment. From the onset, the three initiatives, sought to provide the users, one of the important stakeholders in the programmes, 'a voice' in the on-going and future developments of HINAGOA in order to ensure the programmes address the real needs of the users in Africa.
Goals of the User Forum are:
To join D-Group User Forum go to http://dgroups.org/groups/research4life or send an email to blessing@itoca.org